“HORROR AT PEMBERTON MILL” and More Terrifying True Stories, Plus a Creepypasta! #WeirdDarkness

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ads heard during the podcasts that are not in my
voice or placed by third party agencies outside of my
control that should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness
or myself. Stories and content and Weird Darkness can be
disturbing for some listeners, and as intended for mature audiences only,
parental discretion is strongly advised. In one area, a man

(00:22):
who saw the flames coming toward him cut his throat
rather than be burned to death. He was rescued before
the fire reached him, but he soon died of his injuries.
In another section, very near to where the fire started,
rescuers had nearly succeeded in freeing a woman where the
fire swept through. She had survived the collapse, only to

(00:45):
be consumed by the fire. As the fire spread, rescue volunteers, firemen,
friends and family were forced back by the extreme heat.
Fire crews poured a steady stream of water on the
burning section, seeking to halt the spread of flames, while
rescues continued on the other side, but it was a

(01:06):
losing battle. The fire soon spread across the entire ruin,
and the terrified screams of those still trapped inside were
quickly silenced, with only the sounds of the fire remaining.
Fourteen people were known to have burned to death in
the sight of their friends and families. Welcome Weirdos. I'm

(01:36):
Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find
stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, the ghost

(01:56):
of a man in gray haunts a London theater. The Boogeyman.
Where did he come from? And is he based on
a real person? A disaster that took place at the
Pemberton Mill on January tenth, eighteen sixty A disaster that
left a community and a nation stunned. A night of
children telling scary stories to each other turns into the

(02:19):
real thing. A young girl bumps into her father in
the hallway, which is impossible as her father isn't home.
James Bond Double oh seven himself tells his own personal
story of the paranormal. Sir Roger Moore tells of his
terrifying experience. A young teen girl wakes up in the

(02:41):
dark of night being choked by a red eyed being
friends here a crash in the kitchen, and though everything
appears normal, what they eventually find is the stuff of nightmares.
The discovery of a body in the local river leaves
one town with a gruesome mystery and the framing of

(03:01):
an innocent man for the murder. Known to the outside
world as the City of the Dead, Dargovs is a
truly remarkable and mysterious place that we know little about.
Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched
or that someone is following you? Perhaps it's not your imagination.

(03:23):
A father in South Yorkshire claims his family's being haunted
by the ghost of an old lady, two men, a forest,
and a weisure board. Will that be enough to find
a rumored black eyed child that's been seen there? What
appears to be a poltergeist continues to torment office colleagues.
Or is it just being playful? And later I'll share

(03:46):
an original creepypasta from a weirdo family member. It's a
story called a Meba. Now bult your doors, lock your windows,
turn off your lights and come with me into the
weird darkness. The Drury Lane Theater in London is possibly

(04:24):
the most haunted theater in the UK. The most famous
ghost is the one called the Man in Gray. He
appears in full costume, wearing a tri cornered hat, a
powdered wig, and a long gray cloak with the hilt
of a sword protruding from it. He is said to
be the ghost of a man whose skeletal remains were

(04:46):
found in eighteen forty eight. A knife had penetrated his
long gray cloak and was still embedded in his rib cage.
He always appears during the daytime to actor when they
are rehearsing. He is thought to be a recordings ghost,
as he is always seen in the same place, walking

(05:08):
quietly in the same direction. His ghostly visitations are thought
to be lucky, for the plays performed after his appearance
always do well at the box office. During renovation work
at the theatre in the late nineteen seventies, builders found
a buried skeleton clad in the remains of a gray
writing coat and a knife sticking out of its ribs.

(05:32):
It is believed this may be the remains of the
young man for whom a body was never located. Another
ghost reported at the theater, described as tall, thin and ugly,
is thought to be the ghost of a grumpy actor
named Charles Macklin. In seventeen thirty five, Charles killed his

(05:52):
fellow actor Thomas Hallam in an argument over a wig.
He thrust his cane through Halliman's left eye into his brain.
Maglan has often been seen backstage wandering the corridor where
the murder was committed. The ghost of comedian Joe mcgraaldy,
who gave his farewell performance at Drury Lane, is a

(06:15):
rather helpful apparition that has often felt rather than seen.
He is said to guide nervous actors gently about the stage.
In nineteen forty eight, a young American actress named Betty
Joe Jones was performing badly during a run of Oklahoma. Then,
as she describes it, she felt invisible hands guiding her

(06:39):
into a different position on a stage. They continued to
guide her around the stage during the rest of the performance.
Her performance was later described as flawless. Also seen on
stage were the ghosts of King Charles the Second and
a crowd of his attendants. Another young actress named Doreen

(07:00):
Duke felt the same invisible hands while trying out for
a part in The King and I. She got the
part hands down. She believed that Joe Grimaldi's ghost was
helping her here. The comedian Stanley Lupino was in his
dressing room applying his makeup. When looking in the mirror

(07:21):
along with his own reflection, he saw another face looking
back at him. It was the face of Dan Leno,
another comedian who had died recently. Lupino was told that
he was using Leno's favorite dressing room. A woman in
the audience saw what was probably a ghost watching the

(07:41):
play that was being performed. She described this apparition as
a man wearing old fashioned clothes sitting at the end
of the row where I was sitting. When the lights
went up, the man was gone. Later, whilst perusing a
book on the history of the theater, she saw a
picture of Charles Keene, a nineteenth century actor. She instantly

(08:05):
recognized him as the ghost that she had seen earlier.
Considering all these reports of hauntings, you could say that
the Drury Lane Theater is where actors both past and
present takes center stage. No exploration into the world of

(08:57):
urban legends would be complete without a look at the
one that started them all, the Boogeyman. He exists everywhere
and nowhere, he's under the bed, hiding in the closet,
or waiting just outside the window for parents to leave
the room so he can feast on their fat, juicy children.

(09:21):
The Boogeyman legend is as old as time. In every
corner of the globe, and in nearly every culture, there
is some version of the Boogeyman. He is eternal. He
is that thing in the darkness that we dare not
speak of. He is your worst nightmare come to life.

(09:42):
It is nearly impossible to say for sure when and
where the Boogeyman originated. He was surely conjured up as
a tool to get children to mind their parents, or
else the Boogeyman would get them. Many a parent has
used this legend when all else fails. Don't stay out
past your curfew, or the Boogeyman will be waiting for you,

(10:05):
they will say, or do as I say, or I'll
sick the Boogeyman on you. So who is the Boogeyman?
He is whatever scares you the most. If you're frightened
of demons, that's who he is for you. If bears
terrify you, he will come to you in the form

(10:26):
of a bear. The worst thing your mind can conjure
is exactly how he will appear to you. Sometimes the
Boogeyman is just a dark shape passing through a room.
At other times he is eyes that stare out from
a crack in a closet door. Every kid knows that

(10:48):
the Boogeyman can be anywhere. That is why you have
to keep the covers pulled up around your neck, and
whatever you do, don't let your legs dangle off the
side of the bed. That's just asking for the Boogeyman
to drag you off to some place far away where
no one will hear your screams. As scary as all

(11:11):
of the Boogeyman's stories are, they are just fantasy, at
least up to a point. There have certainly been many
cases over the years of real life boogeymen who have
done things more terrifying than any make believe monster ever could.
One of those monsters was a man named Tommy Lynne Sells.

(11:38):
Cells was executed by the state of Texas in twenty
fourteen for the brutal murder of thirteen year old Kayleen Harris.
He was every parent's worst nightmare, a devil in human
form who preyed upon the most innocent of victims. Cells
was thought to have been responsible for the murders of

(11:59):
at least twenty two men, women, and children. It wasn't
until the attack on young Kayleen and her friend Crystal
Surlis that Sells reign of terror finally ended. The killer
had been an acquaintance of Kayleen's parents when they met
him at a community church event. He was down on
his luck, and being good people, they tried to help

(12:22):
him in any way they could. They couldn't know that
their kindness would be repaid with more heartache than they
imagined possible. It was on New Year's Eve nineteen ninety
nine that the family saw what the real Tommy Lynne
Cells was capable of. As Kayleen and Crystal were sleeping

(12:43):
peacefully in Kayleen's bunk beds, Cells crept into the room
and began to viciously attack the thirteen year old. Awakened
by the violence taking place in the bed below, hers
ten year old Crystal watched helplessly as her friend and
was stabbed multiple times. When Cells was finished with Kayleen,

(13:05):
he turned his attention to Cristel, slicing the child across
the throat. Thinking that both girls were dead, Cells fled
the scene. Young Cristel, though critically wounded, managed to escape
from the home and make it to a neighbor's house.
They immediately called police and the search for the maniac

(13:26):
who attacked the girls was set into motion. Kayleen did
not survive the horrifying attack, but Cristel did, and she
remembered everything. With her help, a forensic artist was able
to draw a sketch of what the killer looked like.
Before long, authorities had their man, one Tommy Lynne Cells.

(13:49):
Cells admitted to killing Kayleen and attempting to murder Crystal.
He didn't stop there. He confessed to murders all over
the country as well as others on speakable crimes. He
was the devil incarnate for anyone unfortunate enough to encounter
him when he was on a crime spree. Still recovering

(14:11):
from the injuries that had nearly killed her, Crystal testified
against Cells at his murder trial. He was convicted of
the murder of Kayleen and the attempted murder of Cristel.
He received the ultimate punishment, death by lethal injection. Cristel's
nightmare was finally over. This boogeyman would never hurt her.

(14:34):
Or anyone else. Ever, again, there are also boogeymen who
are the products of the worldwide communication highway, the Internet.

(14:57):
The most famous or infamous of those has to be
slender Man. Slender Man began innocently enough as an Internet meme.
Not long after his creation, various websites started inviting users
to send in their own slender Man stories. People from
all over the world began to make up scary tales

(15:19):
about slender Man. In many of the fictionalized accounts, slender
Man was a nameless, faceless entity who stalked and sometimes
murdered unsuspecting victims. He was usually portrayed as very tall
and thin, with abnormally long limbs. Video games and even

(15:40):
film shorts have been developed with slender Man as their
central character. He has become a phenomenon very popular with
teens and adults alike. As with anything that becomes as
well known as slender Man, some people took it too seriously,
with dire consequence. In May of twenty fourteen, two twelve

(16:04):
year old girls in Wisconsin invited a mutual friend over
for a sleepover. The friend had spent time at the
home of one of the girls before, and they were
good friends. She had no reason to think that this
night would be any different. She couldn't have been more wrong.

(16:25):
The two girls who had suggested the sleepover had a plan.
They were going to isolate the third girl and then,
when the time was right, kill her. They weren't angry
with the girl, In fact, they had no problems with
her whatsoever. Allegedly, they wanted to kill their friend to
prove to slender Man that they were worthy to be

(16:48):
his disciples. The girls had followed the exploits of slender
Man online and believed him to be real. They thought
that he lived in the woods somewhere close by. They
intended to murder their friend and then find his house
so they could reveal to him what they had done.

(17:08):
Once the two girls had the third girl alone, one
of them is said to have held her down while
the other one stabbed her. Thinking they had accomplished their mission,
they left the girl's body in the woods and set
out looking for slender Man. A passing bicyclist happened upon
the girl who had been so brutally attacked by those

(17:30):
she thought were her friends. The girl had been stabbed
over a dozen times, but she was still alive. And
was even able to identify her assailants. The two would
be killers were quickly apprehended. Their alleged victim is still recovering,
both physically and emotionally from what happened to her that
day when her friends turned on her and all for

(17:53):
a boogeyman who existed only in their minds. The Boogeyman
of the past is a creature from the land of
make believe whose original purpose was to get kids to
walk the straight and narrow and mind their elders. That
doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of things that go
bump in the night to be fearful of, like the

(18:14):
cold blooded killer who unleashed his rage on two young
girls one dark Texas night. Boogeymen aren't all around us.
Usually we don't even realize how close we've come to
danger until it has already passed us by the Next
time you feel a shiver for no reason, or goose

(18:36):
flesh suddenly appears on your arms, that might just be
something trying to tell you that evil is closer than
you think. Coming up. A disaster that took place at
the Pemberton Mill on January tenth, eighteen sixty a disaster

(18:56):
that left a community and a nation stunned. That story
when Weird Darkness returns, Hey Weirdos. Our next Weirdo watch

(19:17):
Party is Saturday, February first. The adorable and funny Granny's
Haunted Parlor hosts a Nancy Drew mystery for us. It's
Nancy Drew Reporter from nineteen thirty nine. In the film,
Nancy is a contest reporter and falls into the mystery
of a murder and a woman she believes is innocent
of the crime. Between film segments, Granny herself will entertain

(19:40):
us with jokes, commentary, skit sent even a cartoon. It's
Nancy Drew Reporter, presented by Granny's Haunted Parlor. Join us
online as we all watch the film together on Saturday,
February first at seven pm Pacific, eight pm Mountain, nine
pm Central, ten pm Eastern on the Monster Channel page
at weird Darkness dot com. The Weirdo Watch Party is

(20:02):
always free to watch. Just tune in a showtime and
watch the movie with me and other Weirdo family members
and even join the chat during the film. Maybe we
can figure out the mystery together before Nancy Drew does.
You can see a trailer for the film now and
watch horror hosts and b movies for free anytime on
the Monster Channel page at Weird Darkness dot com. That's

(20:23):
Weird Darkness dot com, slash TV, and we'll see you Saturday,
February first for our Weirdo watch party. All too often

(21:04):
we hear about an accident or events somewhere that resulted
in almost unimaginable tragedy and loss of life. Yet there
are even more stories where an accident occurs, but tragedy
is averted by the slimmest chance. In those cases, there
remains that haunting codicil, what if What if it happened

(21:26):
fifteen minutes earlier or fifteen minutes later? What if it
had been a weekday, or what if it had been
a weekend. We hear of an elementary school that was
struck by a tornado just minutes after the last child
had left for the day, or a church that was
flattened an hour before it would have been full for
Sunday services, or the mine explosion on a holiday that

(21:49):
kept many miners at home. There is the train that
falls into a ravine shortly after most of the passengers
have disembarked. How many times have you heard of a
natural gas leak causing a house to explode but no
one was home at the time. The disaster that took

(22:09):
place at the Pemberton Mill on January tenth, eighteen sixty
was truly such a tragedy that fits into each of
these categories. But with a twist, there occurred a terrible
disaster that resulted in an impossibly small loss of life,
followed by a second disaster that left a community and

(22:31):
a nation stunned. Lawrence, Massachusetts, was a city founded to
promote the growing textile industry. The land that was to

(22:54):
become the site for the new city was purchased in
eighteen forty five by a group of Boston and Dusty
strealists with the intention of bringing in textile mills. The
location was perfect for this purpose. It was on the
Merrimack River, a great amount of water was required to
run the mills. It was just a short train ride
from Boston, and it was downriver from Lowell. The city

(23:18):
of Lowell had been founded twenty years earlier and was
already the largest textile producer in the US. The Boston
investors were certain that they could capitalize on the growing
demand from manufactured textiles and the already established industries in
the area. There was another advantage to the location, a

(23:38):
huge labor force that was ready willing and able. For years,
men had been traveling to Europe encouraging immigration to the
New England States by guaranteeing employment and housing. As ships
arrived in New York and Boston harbors, there were wagons
waiting to take the immigrants straight to the textile mills.

(24:00):
In some cases, these newcomers to America's shores were on
a ship one day, in operating a loom the next.
Their ranks included men, women, and children. It was a
sad fact that children as young as eight years old
were employed in the mills. The new city to be
named Lawrence after Congressman Abbot Lawrence, one of the initial investors,

(24:23):
would simply tap into the already established pipeline of workers.
Unbeknownst to the mill owners, they were about to get
a great boom in the labor market. The Great Famine,
better known in America as the Irish Potato Famine, was
a time of mass starvation and disease in Ireland between

(24:44):
eighteen forty five and eighteen fifty two, over a million
Irish people died and another million emigrated, mainly to the
US where jobs awaited them in the textile mills. The
Boston inventors were exactly correct in their plans. Lawrence did
indeed become a major player in textiles. The city was

(25:07):
incorporated in eighteen fifty three, and within a few years
several very large mills had been built and work was underway.
Several tenements had been built along with the mills. Since
the city was brand new and the factory workers would
need housing as soon as they arrived so they could
get right to work. It all seemed too good to

(25:28):
be true. Business was booming, and by eighteen sixty, only
seven years after it was founded, Lawrence had a population
of over seventeen thousand. It had been nicknamed immigrant City,
employing workers from almost every country in Europe and French
Canadians as well. The dreams of the Boston investors had

(25:50):
come true in ways they probably hadn't dared to imagine,
but not so for the immigrants. True they had received
what they had been promised, it wasn't really what they
had expected. Almost anyone who wanted a job could easily
get one. The mills needed as many unskilled workers as
they did those with specialized training. They worked sixty five

(26:13):
hours per week, and the vast majority of workers called operatives,
earned about forty cents a day for a total of
about two dollars per week. At those wages, a head
of household couldn't possibly earn enough to support his or
her family, so entire families had to work in the mills.
The single largest group in the textile labor force was women,

(26:37):
and usually young women. The largest employer in Lawrence was
the American Woolen Company. Over half of their operatives were
girls between fourteen and eighteen. Many children accompanied their parents
and older siblings into the mills, some as young as eight,
but most companies shied away from hiring children that young,

(26:58):
preferring to wait till they were at least. Women and
children could do much of the work, and it was
expected that they would be paid less than the men.
It was a sound business practice for increasing profits. Housing
was another one of the promises made to immigrants when
they were being enticed to come and work. This promise,

(27:20):
too was kept, though again very likely not as the
immigrants envisioned Lawrence operatives and their families lived in overcrowded
and dangerous tenement buildings. Frequently several families had to share
a single apartment. As wages were low and rent was high,
it was the only way they could afford to keep

(27:41):
a roof over their heads. Food was expensive too. The
main staples were bread, molasses, and beans. Meat was costly
and was usually reserved for holidays. The working and living
conditions did not allow for a healthy workforce. The mills
were terribly dangerous, especially for the children. It was not

(28:03):
unheard of for an operative to be terribly injured, perhaps
losing a hand or arm in a loom. The procedure
was to escort the injured outside, where they would wait
in hopes that they did not bleed to death until
a friend or family member would find them and take
them home. Workplace injuries, along with disease and malnutrition, took

(28:25):
a very high toll. A child in Lawrence or one
of the other mill towns had only a fifty percent
chance of surviving past the age of six. Life expectancy
wasn't much better for the adults. Of those who worked
in a textile mill, thirty six out of every one
hundred men and women died before reaching the ripe old

(28:47):
age of twenty five. In eighteen fifty three, John Lowell
and his brother in law, Jay Pickering Putnam, decided to
go into the textile business. They hired an inn engineer
named Charles H. Bigelow to construct a large building that
would house the most modern textile equipment available. Their new

(29:08):
Pemberton Mill, a cotton spinning mill, met their expectations and
then some. The building was five stories high with a basement,
and measured two hundred eighty feet long and eighty four
feet wide, giving them roughly one hundred forty one thousand
square feet of workspace. The building and equipment cost a
previously unheard of amount of eight hundred fifty thousand dollars.

(29:33):
Several hundred operatives were hired, and Lowell and Putnam were
in business after only four years. Lowell and Putnam lost
their nerve during a financial panic. In eighteen fifty seven,
they sold Pemberton Mill to George Howe and David Nevins
Senior for a substantial loss. The new owners moved in

(29:53):
more equipment and hired more operatives to increase the output.
The mill operated with great siccess and earned the owners
an average of one point five million dollars each year.
The building was so packed with machines and workers that
it was said to vibrate with energy based on what

(30:13):
was to come. That vibration was more than likely literal
rather than figurative, as over one thousand people toiled there,
running two thousand, seven hundred spindles and seven hundred looms.
The industrial area where the Pemberton Mill was located had
several working textile mills situated side by side along the

(30:36):
Merrimack River. There were thousands of operatives going to and
from work at the same times each day. The area
was terribly congested with buildings and people, and buildings filled
with people. Looking back, it was a disaster waiting to happen,
and so it was. On Tuesday, January tenth, eighteen sixty,

(30:58):
at a few minutes before five afternoon, there were many
people on hand to witness what was to be the
single worst industrial accident in Massachusetts and one of the
worst in US history. People outside and inside the Pemberton

(31:24):
Mill building were startled when, as described an American Heritage magazine,
suddenly there was a sharp rattle and then a prolonged,
deafening crash. A section of the building's brick wall seemed
to bulge out and explode, and then, literally in seconds,
the Pemberton collapsed. Tons of machinery crashed down through the

(31:46):
crumpling floors, dragging trapped, screaming victims along in their downward path.
The factory was a heap of twisted iron, splintered beams,
pulverized bricks, and agonized imprisoned human flesh. Workers from neighbouring
mills could do nothing but watch in horror and disbelief
as the entire Pemberton building, all five stories, collapsed before

(32:11):
their eyes. The air was rent by screams of the
operatives trapped inside the ruins. Where there was once a
huge industrial building was now a pile of rubble under
a huge plume of dust. Nothing remained except a section
of an exterior rear wall. Everything else was gone, reduced

(32:32):
to a massive pile of rubble. Cries for help filled
the air as workers in nearby mills rushed to the scene.
Somewhere between eight hundred and nine hundred people had been
in the building when it collapsed. To the utter amazement
of the witnesses, living breathing people began crawling out of

(32:53):
the rubble. A few hundred people were either unhurt or
had only minor injuries and were able to pull themselves
from the wreckage. With a catastrophic event that should have
meant certain death for almost everyone in the building, there
were survivors. Many survivors, in fact, Other than a few
dozen who had died instantly, almost everyone in the building

(33:15):
survived the collapse, even after falling several stories as the
floors fell from beneath their feet. Iron columns had crumbled,
massive beams had been splintered, and many tons of brick
and mortar lay in heaps. But somehow, many many people
were still alive. Witnesses believed it was nothing short of

(33:39):
a miracle. As the dust began to settle, more than
six hundred workers were still held captive in the tangled,
twisted ruins. Some were merely trapped, some had minor or
at least survivable wounds, and still others were still breathing
but had sustained substantial injuries. George Howe, one of the owners,

(34:00):
had escaped as the structure was falling. His partner, David Nevins,
was away from the building when it fell. Apparently the
large and heavy machinery inside the building that had helped
cause the collapse also helped protect the workers inside. Those
who were able to avoid being crushed by the falling
machines were in turn protected by them as they created

(34:23):
safe pockets of space while holding up the timbers and
other debris. In some cases, as many as twenty five
people survived by huddling in the same protected space. One woman,
who was standing near a window along the wall that
remained standing, became so frightened that she threw her bonnet
and shawl out the window and then jumped out herself.

(34:46):
She soon died from injuries sustained from her dramatic leap.
While many people were able to free themselves from the wreckage,
it took herculean efforts to free others. Workers from nearby
mills and the surrounding community ran to the aid of
the victims. Every able bodied person pitched in, working at
a breakneck pace to free trapped people as quickly as

(35:08):
they could. Friends and family members arrived on the scene
and began a frantic search for their loved ones. A
general alarm had gone out to the Lawrence Fire Department
and to those in the surrounding towns. When the firefighters arrived,
they climbed down and went to work with the rescue effort.
There were many tales of daring escapes, remarkable rescues, and

(35:31):
unbelievable recoveries. A group of men heard a young girl
screaming and crying for help. She was found covered by
at least ten feet of rubble and debris. After working
to remove the twisted mass from on top of her,
the rescuers were shocked when the girl jumped up, unhurt
and smiling, thanked them for freeing her, and ran off

(35:53):
to find her family. In another part of the ruins,
a family of five was released from their tomb on
armed when a large section of floor was lifted from
above them. They climbed from the hole. The terrified mother
scooped her children to her, and, praising their rescuers, cried
out a prayer of thanks. Another miraculous escape was that

(36:14):
of Selena Weeks. Miss Weeks had been working in the
fifth floor spool room and dropped with it when the
building fell. As she regained her senses, she realized that
she was still standing on the spool room floor, but
was waisted deep in debris. She was able to dig
her way out and made her way home unharmed. At

(36:36):
the same time that miss Weeks fell from the top floor,
Damon Wyham was working in the basement. He found himself
completely buried under a dozen feet of debris. After repeated tries,
he was able to tunnel his way to an area
where rescuers could reach him, and he was pulled to safety.
A small boy who was working on one of the

(36:58):
upper floors reeled lies to what was happening. When he
heard the crashes, he jumped into a trash can and
rode down, with the floor, becoming buried under several feet
of wreckage. When rescuers lifted the material from what contemporary
reports described as his safety capsule, he jumped out and
walked away as if nothing had happened. Three young sisters

(37:22):
with the appropriate surname of Luck all survived. Jane Luck
was buried for nearly five hours, but was released unharmed.
Her sister, Anna Luck, heard the crashing as the building
collapsed and dove under her loom. She called to her
other sister and friend to do the same. All three

(37:42):
of the girls survived. Not all of the Luck family
was as Lucky the girl's two uncles, who were working
in the mill were killed. Thomas Watson was on the
fifth floor when it fell. His jaw was broken in
three places, and he sustained three broken ribs and several
deep cuts. Despite his injuries, he climbed out from the

(38:05):
rubble unaided. He noticed, to his surprise that he had
not felt any pain until he was walking about free.
His wife also worked at the mill, but that day
she had stayed home for the first time since she
had started work six months before. It so happened that
Watson was to leave on a trip the next day,

(38:26):
and she had stayed home to prepare his traveling clothes
and pack his things. The child was found pinned under
a large iron pillar by a rescue team, lying next
to a woman. The following is a contemporary description of
the dramatic events that followed. On Tuesday evening, While two
thousand men were exerting every energy and rescuing the survivors

(38:49):
from their living sepulchers and the dead from the rubbish
which buried them, a party came upon the body of
a little girl. She lay, apparently crushed beneath a ponderous
block of orofe iron weighing over a thousand pounds, and
which covered her body to the chin. Her back was
pressed against a huge timber. One of her arms was
thrust to the elbow through a ring in a piece

(39:11):
of machinery, and she was completely wedged in by heavy
iron gearing. Intent only on preserving her features and form
as little disfigured as possible, the men labored carefully to
remove the block of iron without crushing her still further,
four of them tugged upon it and succeeded in loosening it.
The other rubbish was then removed and the body taken out.

(39:34):
When what was the surprise and joy of the man
to find that they had rescued a living girl instead
of a corpse, and more that her injuries were not
fatal but comparatively trifling. The heavy iron had met with
some more powerful obstruction than her body, and her life
was spared as if by a miracle. The body of

(39:56):
the woman lying next to her was extricated from the
ruins by her friends and relatives. The bricks and iron
had buried her so tightly that there were no hopes
for survival. When her body was at last drawn out,
the circle of friends found their worst fears confirmed, her
husband took her carefully in his arms and bore her

(40:16):
toward his home. A number of relatives were there waiting. Suddenly,
the woman revived and, throwing up her hand, cried out,
I'm safe, I'm safe. She was received as one risen
from the dead. Henry Nice was both victim and hero.
He was working in the boiler room when the building

(40:36):
fell as rubble began to fall on him. He rushed
for the door and fell out onto the porch, where
debris piled onto him. After being nearly suffocated by a
cloud of steam and dust, he was able to burrow
through to safety, but instead of leaving, he began a
search of the area. He found a young girl whose
arms and legs were injured, pinned to the floor by

(40:59):
a beam across her neck. He found a saw and
cut her free, passing her off to a rescue team.
As he continued to search for survivors. Then he located
a friend of his lying over a young woman who
was pinned under a massive wreckage. The woman urged Nice
to free the man first, as she was not as
badly injured. After the man was removed, a team worked

(41:22):
feverishly trying to remove a heavy piece of machinery from
over her, but they were unable to free her. They
planned to come back later with tools, but after the
second disaster of the night befell them. She was killed
where she lay. In another area, a man named Adams
was trapped in the basement by several heavy beams. Because

(41:45):
of the precarious position of the beams relative to where
he was trapped, rescuers were unable to reach him, but
instead passed him an axe and a saw. With these tools,
he was able to cut and chop his way to freedom.
Dramatic rescue efforts continued throughout the site, with person after
person being pulled from the wreckage. The Lawrence City Hall

(42:09):
had been prepared for double duty as a makeshift morgue
and as a hospital. As the dead were removed, they
were carefully carried to the dead room. When the injured
were removed, they were taken to the hospital room in
the same building. It was a cold January day, but
the rescuers stayed warm with exertion. Soon it began to

(42:32):
grow dark and colder. Large bonfires were built in a
circle around the collapsed building to provide light for the
rescuers as they continued their search into the darkness. At
about nine thirty that night, after four and a half
hours and hundreds of people freed from the wreckage, someone
either kicked over or dropped an oil lamp. The burning

(43:07):
fluid quickly spread to a pile of debris. The flames
shot across the splintered wood and wads of cotton, some
soaked with oil, and quickly ignited the ruins of the building,
where many trapped but living people were waiting to be released.
The second disaster of the day had begun. In one area,

(43:28):
a man who saw the flames coming toward him cut
his throat rather than be burned to death. He was
rescued before the fire reached him, but he soon died
of his injuries. In another section, very near to where
the fire started, rescuers had nearly succeeded in freeing a
woman where the fire swept through. She had survived the collapse,

(43:50):
only to be consumed by the fire. As the fire spread,
rescue volunteers, firemen, friends and family were forced back by
the extreme heat. Fire crews poured a steady stream of
water on the burning section, seeking to halt the spread
of flames while rescues continued on the other side, but

(44:11):
it was a losing battle. The fire soon spread across
the entire ruin, and the terrified screams of those still
trapped inside were quickly silenced, with only the sounds of
the fire remaining. Fourteen people were known to have burned
to death in the sight of their friends and families.

(44:32):
The fire burned long and hot, raging through the night
and into the next day, Wednesday, January eleventh. There was
little that any one could do but stand back and watch.
Anyone who had been left alive after the collapse was
now dead, ravaged by fire. By evening, the fire had

(44:53):
mostly burned itself out, but too much heat was radiating
from the wreckage for any one to approach. During the
day on Wednesday, a crowd had begun to form. Flocks
of people from other towns and cities, including Boston, began
arriving by train. They filled every available inch of space
they could find, filling the streets and lining the bridge

(45:16):
over the Merrimac. They had come to see the wreckage
of the once thriving factory. They wanted to be a
part of history, to be able to say that they
had been there to see what was left after the
great building had collapsed. As the day drew on, a
light rain had begun to fall, later turning to snow.

(45:36):
The Pemberton Mill Company took over the ruins. From here on,
company men would be directing the efforts as rescue had
become recovery. By ten o'clock Thursday morning, January twelveth the
fire was almost completely out, but smoke continued to bellow
up from deep inside the rubble. The fire fighters continued

(45:58):
to pour streams of water where they saw smoke. It
was still too hot to enter the wreckage, so recovery
efforts had to be put off another day. The smoke
and cold didn't seem to deter the crowds of the
morbidly curious. They would have to wait another day to
see flesh and bone released from the ashes. As snow

(46:20):
continued to fall, it drifted down through the burned out
beams and machinery, falling gently onto the upraised faces of
charred corpses, who patiently waited to be released from their
tune and taken to their families. On Friday morning, January thirteenth,
the pit had cooled enough for the recovery efforts to continue.

(46:42):
Derreck's were set up around the ruin to help lift
and remove heavy machinery and debris. Victims were once again
being removed, but this time none were among the living.
The recovery was now more dangerous, but the one hundred
men working there were determined that no one would be
left in that miserable pit. The crowd continued to look on,

(47:05):
but a few of the men left the safety of
the road and stepped inside the perimeter, adding themselves to
the recovery operation. At one point, as groups of two
and three worked their way through the wreckage, a man
remembered where he had seen a young woman named Kate
Cooney partially buried. She had been struck by a beam
and her legs were pinned under her so she couldn't move.

(47:29):
It had been just before the fire found her that
he had heard her cries for help. The men dug
in the area, the man indicated, and they soon came
upon her body. She had been badly burned about her
head and neck, and her arms had been burned off
up to her elbows, but her lower body was relatively untouched.
Her skirt and apron were not even scorched. Thirteen more

(47:53):
bodies were pulled out on Saturday the fourteenth. As before,
some were only partially burned, some were completely charred, and
others were found with only portions of limbs remaining to
indicate that a human body had once lain in that spot.
As darkness approached, the men stopped working as they did
not want to further mutilate by accident any bodies they

(48:17):
might find in the darkness. They made every effort to
get everybody identified and returned to the people who loved them.
On Sunday the fifteenth, over one hundred fifty men arrived
for work at sunrise and the search continued. They did
not wish to cause any more grief than was absolutely
necessary for the families that were still waiting for some

(48:39):
one to be pulled out of the rubble. They chose
to work through their one day of rest. On January
twenty ten, days after the building had collapsed, the last
bodies were recovered from the debris. These bodies were completely unrecognizable.
They were taken to the dead room at the city Hall,

(48:59):
even though no one there would be able to claim them.
In the end, thirteen bodies had been charred and mutilated
beyond any possibility of identification. A little more than two
months after the disaster, the city purchased a plot in
Lawrence's Bellevue Cemetery, and on Sunday, March fourth, eighteen sixty nine,

(49:22):
funeral services were held and the remains of the unknown
workers were laid to rest. Later, a monument was placed
at the head of the plot in memory of all
who lost their lives in Pemberton Mill. The crowds remained
at the disaster site for many days after the last
body had been removed. It was as if they just

(49:43):
couldn't move on. Soon, people began to wander on to
the site and started sifting through the debris, searching for
relics or mementoes of the disaster. A man from Saint
Louis collected a large bundle of grisly souvenirs that included
burned clothing from some of the victims. Two New Yorkers

(50:03):
collected pieces of broken bricks and splinters of burned beams.
The ferocity with which the relic seekers went about their
business was becoming a hazard to the cleanup crews and
the intruders alike. Eventually realizing it had to stop, the
mayor and the company gave orders for it to stop
and hired men to guard the ruins. Eventually, the crowds

(50:25):
dispersed and went home. Calls went out across the country
for financial assistance. The New England Society of Manufacturers collected
a total of nineteen thousand dollars and handed it over
to Mayor Daniel Saunders. Boston clubs and societies brought in
another nine thousand dollars. Churches, schools and fraternal organizations collected

(50:48):
donations from around the country, raising the total of sixty
five thousand, five hundred seventy nine dollars and twenty nine cents.
Mayor Saunders put together a committee to determine how best
to use the money to assist the victims. Hearings were
held to investigate the cause of the collapse and to
determine fault. After several days of testimony, the blame was

(51:12):
laid at the door of engineer Charles Bigelow. The primary
problems with the building lay in faulty or otherwise sub
standard materials. The iron pillars that had been put in
place to support the heavy machinery were found to be
brittle and badly cast. In a moment of stress they
had crumbled. It was also determined that the mortar used

(51:34):
with the bricks was extremely poor and was completely ineffective
at holding the brick joints together. The committee felt that
the use of appropriate materials and construction systems should have
been Bigelow's responsibility, and that his design must somehow be
at fault as well. The committee failed to take into
account that most of the other mill buildings and Lawrence

(51:57):
had also been designed and built by Bigelow. They also
ignored the fact that the mill's second owners had severely
overloaded the structure well beyond its design limits. No blame
was assigned to the owners, since they obviously had purchased
a faulty building without knowledge of its shortcomings. Some of

(52:18):
the final statistics were startling. Women and girls made up
sixty two percent of the mill's workforce, but they made
up seventy three percent of the dead and missing and
sixty seven percent of the injured, leaving questions of how
these proportions became so out of balance. After the dead
and the living had been counted and counted again, it

(52:41):
was believed that of the one thousand three employees at
the Pemberton mill. Between ninety nine and one hundred forty
five people lost their lives in the disaster. The best
estimate as to those injured is three hundred two. All
of these numbers are horrifying and unfortunate, but the most
remarkable thing of all is that while a five story

(53:04):
building suffered a catastrophic collapse into rubble in a matter
of seconds, nearly six hundred people either climbed out or
were pulled free of the wreckage without injury and were
able to walk home on their own. After all the
bodies had been recovered, the company called in those who
were unemployed as a result of the disaster and hired

(53:25):
them to work on the clean up crewise When all
the wreckage had been removed, the owners rebuilt a new
mill on the old foundation and reopened for business. For
a long time after the second Pemberton Mill was opened,
workers reported seeing people they didn't recognize walking through a
room or down an aisle. The employee might turn a

(53:47):
corner and catch a glimpse of a mysterious person wearing
old fashioned clothes who suddenly vanished. It didn't take long
for the living workers to suspect that they were sharing
their works with people who were long since dead. Over time,
fewer and fewer people spoke about seeing these spectral workers

(54:08):
in the mill. It is impossible to determine if they
were appearing less frequently, or if the living had grown
so accustomed to their ethereal comrades that they no longer
noticed when they were around. The mill has long been
closed down, but the building still stands on the bank
of the Merrimack River. There is talk of turning it

(54:30):
into loft style condominiums or possibly a shopping center. It
will be interesting to see if any of the future
occupants of the old Pemberton Mill building turn a corner
one day and come face to face with a woman
and a floor length skirt and long apron looking for
her machine in order to spin cotton. Into yet another

(54:51):
century where darkness returns, A knight of children telling scary
stories to each other turns into the real thing. Plus
a young girl bumps into her father in the hallway,
which is impossible as her father isn't home. James Bond

(55:15):
Double seven, Roger Moore himself tells his own personal paranormal story. Also,
the discovery of a body in the local river leaves
one town with a gruesome mystery, and possibly the framing
of an innocent man for the murder. These stories and
more coming up In twenty twenty five, Neutron bombs wipe

(55:53):
out much of the world's drinkable water. For the next
several years. Survivors exist in deploy conditions and their rations
are dwindling. One woman arises from the camp determined to
improve conditions. Charlotte is ready to do whatever it takes
to ensure clean water for her fellow survivors. Water is almighty.

(56:17):
Whoever controls the water rules the world. Can Charlotte prevent
the power from falling into the wrong hands. Weird Darkness
Publishing presents Working for h two zero by Sarah Faith
now available in paperback, kindle and audiobook versions on Amazon
and at Weird Darkness dot com. This will be the

(57:05):
first time I have submitted a paranormal story of any
kind to a website. Several strange things have happened to
me during my life. This was the first incident. It
took place when I was around six or seven years old.
We lived in the middle of nowhere with our grandmother.

(57:27):
Our father was a traveling salesman and we rarely saw
him On one particular night, we were all in bed
and shared the same room. I decided it would be
fun to try and scare my brother and sister by
telling them spooky stories. Well, they got freaked out and
our grandmother came in upset at all the noise we

(57:49):
were making. She could hear us downstairs. She told us
to go to sleep and stop making noise. I was
starting to fall asleep when I heard it sounded like
muffled coughing coming from the other side of the room.
Hearing the coughing, I was awake. I tried to go
back to sleep, and then suddenly I heard whispering. I

(58:14):
knew that my siblings were asleep, so I was confused
as to where this whispering was coming from. There was
literally nobody else in the house except my brothers, sisters,
and grandma. I started to understand the whispers something like
go home. I don't know why I did this, but

(58:39):
I got up and decided to turn on the light,
and nothing was in the room with us. I looked
everywhere after that I didn't find anybody. I was extremely
freaked out by this, so I went in the living
room and told our grandmother that there was someone in
the bedroom, and of course she didn't believe me. Ever

(59:02):
since that incident, I have been terrified at the dark.
Even today, I tend to sleep with at least one
light on in the bedroom. My wife and I have

(59:24):
been fascinated by the paranormal since we got married. We
enjoyed watching paranormal shows about ghost hunting and learning about
the subject. We never thought we would share a paranormal
experience which also involved our teenage daughter. This experience would
have to do with what might have been a doppelganger.

(59:47):
At the time, we did not know what these things
were called or anything about them at all. During the
early years of our marriage, we lived in a two
bedroom apartment with our daughter. It was a summer afternoon
and I had decided to go to the gym. Normally
I would be there about an hour, give or take.
I'd been gone for just over twenty minutes, according to

(01:00:08):
my wife. When this happened. My wife was doing some
house cleaning vacuuming to be exact. When our daughter came
home from cheerleading practice. She greeted my wife and went
to her room for a couple of minutes to drop
off her jim bag before returning to the living room
looking for me, She asked my wife where I was.

(01:00:30):
My wife told our daughter I was at the gym.
My daughter asked, did he just leave and to were surprised.
My wife responded, no, he's been gone almost thirty minutes.
My daughter got scared and thought maybe her mom was
messing with her. Don't say that, she said, I just
saw him when I went to my room in the hallway.

(01:00:51):
I greeted him and he answered me back. He said hey,
and actually passed right next to me. I felt him
pass next to me, and he said hello to me
by name. I even had to move as he passed.
My daughter said, I walked into our bedroom. I never
came out. My wife reassured her that I was gone
and had not been back. Our daughter said she never

(01:01:13):
saw my face because whatever that thing was had its
head down. She said it was definitely my voice and
even described what I was wearing. Our apartment had a
narrow hallway that led to the two bedrooms. Hers was
on the left and hours on the right. Anyone wanting

(01:01:35):
to exit the apartment from the bedrooms would have to
walk into the living room. After I came home from
the gym, and heard what had happened from my wife.
I spoke with my still shaking daughter and reassured her
I had been at the gym till this day. My daughter,
who now as a mother herself, gets freaked out about

(01:01:56):
this experience. It was years later when we learned about doppelgangers.
We don't know what this was, a doppelganger or something else.
Whatever it was, it never happened again. Several years ago,

(01:02:25):
James Bond Star Roger Moore spoke openly about his own
experience with the paranormal. This is his account. Sir Roger
Moore said, I was frozen. I wanted to call out
and scream, but couldn't speak. I was numb, paralyzed from
head to toe. I was sitting bolt upright in my

(01:02:48):
bed and watching a white, ghostly figure moving towards me.
It was the apparition of a man. The shape of
the body was clearly defined. There was a head, body
and legs, but it was missed like I pulled myself
together somehow, calmed myself and then tried to communicate with

(01:03:09):
the ghost. I said, softly, what do you want? Are
you troubled? As I went to move from the bed,
the ghost disappeared, just vanished. The second night of Sir
Roger's stay, the apparition reappeared. He said. It returned at
the exact same time, about two am. I was petrified.

(01:03:34):
I thought, it's after me. What does it want with me?
I tried to make contact once again, but to no avail.
It vanished again. In the morning, the room maid asked me,
did you see the ghost last night? Sir I replied,
good heavens, how do you know about it? No, I
didn't see it last night, she said. I didn't think

(01:03:55):
you would. I left the hotel, but often think about
the incident. I never found out what it was all about.
When I went to the room on the third night,
a Bible opened on the twenty third Psalm was beside
my bed. I hadn't put the Bible there or opened it,

(01:04:16):
but that night the ghost did not appear. I was

(01:04:40):
in my early teens and had my own room at
the time. I've been having some difficulties sleeping in my
own bed for various reasons, and I remember having a
very hard time this night. In particular, I would sometimes
come to my parents and stand at the side of
the bed and whisper to wake them up, which scared

(01:05:02):
them to death, and then trade beds with my father,
who would stay in my bed. This was the case
that night. I believe it's hard to really remember the
circumstances because it happened a few times, and I had
taken the side of the bed nobody wanted to sleep on.
That side of the bed was close to the wall

(01:05:23):
with a foot gap, It was hard to scot into
to get into bed, and it was darker on that
side of the room for reasons unknown, so we avoided it.
More than likely I took that side because the bed
was full and I didn't have a choice. We often
saw someone standing against the wall on that side of

(01:05:45):
the bed as well, and had given the shadow a
name as a joke to make it less sinister, so
this could have played a part in what happened. I
remember choking awake. I was on my back, my hands
on my chest, and I was stuck in that position.
My eyes were wild because the whole room was black,

(01:06:06):
I mean dark as dark could get, which was odd
because we lived by a street light and that room
never got very dark at night to begin with, so
it being that dark, that black was terrifying. I couldn't
see anything in front of me. There was this pressure
on my chest and hands that made it difficult to breathe.

(01:06:29):
I remember choking for air, thinking I had blacked out
or was dreaming and would wake up. Then these two great,
big red eyes opened right in front of my face,
no pupils, no iris, just red eyes blinking down at me,
and I started to make out this humped up shape

(01:06:50):
of something sitting on me in the dark. It was
definitely sitting on me, just looking down hatefully. I started
to panic, realizing I was stuck. At this time, I'd
had so many experiences that I wasn't sure if this
was a dream or just another one of those experiences.
And I woke up. The room was back to its

(01:07:13):
usual lightness. Everything was cast in a blue night hue,
and there were no red eyes. I was able to
breathe again. I sat up and looked around at the bed.
Then I climbed over every single person laying there and
ran to my room. I think that was one of
the last times I ever slept in there. I have

(01:07:36):
two younger sisters, but as far as I know, they
didn't seem to have the same problems. I did have
a couple of other episodes of sleep paralysis and started
experiencing insomnia nightly. I had a routine in high school
where I would sleep a few hours, wake up at
one am, naturally right until three am, and go back

(01:07:59):
to bed for a couple more hours. This all started
after the Old Hag incident. I just stopped sleeping well
after that. Two men fishing in the Seneca River near Baldwinsville,

(01:08:24):
New York, in June eighteen seventy four came across what
appeared to be a bundle of clothes floating in the water.
Closer inspection revealed that it was the body of a man,
waited so firmly that they could not drag it ashore
without assistance. The feet had been tied to a sixty
eight pound rock. Examination revealed that a second rock tied

(01:08:49):
to the neck had slipped away, allowing the body to
float into sight. The right side of his skull had
been smashed, and the Baldwinsville Medical Examiner determined that the
man had been murdered, but after several months in the river,
his features were unrecognizable. The discovery caused much excitement in

(01:09:10):
the quiet farming village of Baldwinsville. No one in the
area had been reported missing, and with the bonny so
badly decomposed, it seemed unlikely ever to be identified gradually,
though the contents of his pockets, a tin spoon, a
package of sewing needles, and a piece of calico cloth
provided enough clues to determine that the dead man was

(01:09:33):
Francis A. Colvin, who had boarded for a time with
John Pickard and his wife. The spoon was from a
set of nine he had purchased, six of which he
gave to Missus Pickard, and one he carried in his
pocket to take medicine for his lungs. He had used
the needles to attempt to sew an extra pocket into
his coat. Missus Pickard completed the pocket for him and

(01:09:57):
also added lapels to the coat, gave him the calico cloth,
part of which he wrapped around his toes to prevent chafing.
An examination of his coat revealed the pocket and the lapels,
and the piece of cloth was still wrapped around his toes.
A dentist who had extracted teeth from Francis Colvin was

(01:10:17):
able to confirm the identification. Francis Colvin had no family
in the area and no friends except the Pickards. After
returning from the Civil War, he had lived almost as
a hermit in a shack in the woods until the
Pickards offered him room and board at their house. Around

(01:10:37):
December eighteen seventy three. He left their house to go
to work on the farm of Daniel Lindsay, and had
expressed his plans to move to Syracuse for a higher
paying job, so no one was suspicious when he was
no longer seen around Baldwinsville. Colvin had been a hard
working and frugal man and had amassed a nest egg

(01:10:58):
of about three thousand dollars and cash and notes, which
he was known to carry on his person. It was
now missing. He had held a mortgage of about three
hundred and fifty dollars on property owned by John Pickard,
which had been transferred to a man named Payne Bigelow.
When questioned, Bigelow said he had purchased the mortgage from

(01:11:19):
Bishop Vader, a farm hand who also worked for Daniel Lindsay.
Veder was arrested in connection with the murder of Francis Colvin.
Vader professed innocence and said that a man named Dwayne
Peck was responsible for the murder. Outside of jail, Daniel
Lindsay's son, Owen, was also spreading the rumor that Dwayne

(01:11:40):
Peck had murdered Francis Colvin. The police arrested Peck, but
soon determined that he had no connection to Colvin's death
and let him go. Bishop Vader was a somewhat simple
minded man. Not an idiot, the district attorney would later say,
but a man that has not the moral curridge to
stand up and say no when one that had great

(01:12:03):
influence over him shall tell him what to do. After
prolonged questioning, Vader revealed that the man who'd been telling
him what to do was Owen Lindsay. When Vader and
Colvin were both working on his father's farm, Owen told
Vader to find out how much money Colvin was carrying.

(01:12:23):
Suspecting nothing, Colvin told him. Owen Lindsay then formulated a
simple plan to take it. He told Vader to lead
Colvin into the barn. The morning of December nineteenth, eighteen
seventy three. As Colvin sat milking a cow, Lindsay came
up behind him and hit him in the head twice
with the flat end of an ax, Lindsay went through

(01:12:46):
Colvin's pockets and removed a pocketbook containing cash and notes.
He gave five hundred dollars to Vader and kept one thousand,
five hundred dollars for himself. They hid the body. Then
Lindsay told Vader to hire a boat. If Lindsay's father
asked where Colvin was, Vader was to tell him he

(01:13:07):
left for the city. He gave Vader two mortgages from
the pocketbook and told him to go to Syracuse, pretend
to be Colvin and sell them. Vader decided it was
easier to sell them in Baldwinsville, so sold one to
paying Bigelow. When the son went down, they put the
body in a sleigh and took it to the boat

(01:13:29):
Vader had rented. They put the body in the boat
and Lindsay tied the rocks to it. When they reached
the deepest part of the river, they threw the body overboard.
After Vader had told his story, the police examined the
sleigh and found bloodstains in the floorboards. They arrested Owen
Lindsay and charged both men with the murder of Francis Colvin.

(01:13:52):
Though Bishop Vader and Owen Lindsay were both charged with
first degree murder. Lindsay was considered the primary They would
be tried separately, with Lindsay's case taken first. The prosecution
spent the first part of the trial introducing testimony to
prove that the body found in the river was that

(01:14:13):
of Francis Golvin. When this was done, the principal witness
against Lindsay would be Bishop Vader. Lindsay's attorney objected to
Vader testifying, as he was charged with the same crime.
The judge heard arguments on both sides of this question,
then ruled that Vader could not testify against his co defendant.

(01:14:35):
The prosecution then changed the charge against Bishop Vader, effectively
dropping the charges against him while leaving them free to
charge him again later. Vader's testimony and cross examination took
more than a day and was quite damaging to Lindsay.
Under oath, he told the same story that he had
told the police. It also came out that Vader was

(01:14:58):
left handed and the blow to the back of Colvin's
head had been delivered by someone who was right handed.
The state then introduced two college professors who had microscopically
examined the blood found in the sleigh. Lindsay had contended
that the stains had come from slaughtered pigs which had
been carried in the sleigh. In new and controversial testimony,

(01:15:22):
both professors concluded from the size of the corpuscles that
the blood was from a human, not a pig. The
defense challenged the date of the murder, introducing witnesses who
claimed to have played parlor croquet with him on December nineteenth,
had seen him at a birthday party, and had seen
him slaughtering pigs four days after he was allegedly murdered.

(01:15:45):
They contended that Bishop Vader alone was guilty of the
murder and had falsely implicated Lindsay. The trial lasted ten days.
After seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict
of guilty of first degree murder. Owen Lindsay was sentenced
to be hanged on March twenty sixth, eighteen seventy five,

(01:16:08):
but the verdict was appealed, postponing the execution for nearly
a year. His attorneys challenged the validity of Bishop Vader
an accomplice and the murder as a witness. The New
York Supreme Court confirmed that the criminal courts have discretionary
power in this respect and let the verdict stand. On

(01:16:29):
February eleventh, eighteen seventy six, Owen Lindsay was hanged in
the courtyard of the Onondaga County Penitentiary. He was urged
to confess his crime, but he maintained his innocence to
the end. Coming up known to the outside world as

(01:16:52):
the City of the Dead, Dargovs is a truly remarkable
and mysterious place that we know little about. Plus friends
hear a crash in the kitchen and though everything appears normal,
what they eventually find is the stuff of nightmares. And
a father in South Yorkshire claims his families being haunted

(01:17:14):
by the ghost of an old lady and later two
men a forest and oisia board. Will that be enough
to find a rumored black eyed child that has been
seen there? These stories and others. When Weird Darkness returns,

(01:17:40):
Quite often I come across stories that I can't fit
into Weird Darkness or just don't feel quite right for
the show, but I still find them interesting. Or I
write an article based on a recent Weird Darkness story.
When that happens, I put it in the Weird Darkness blog.
Sometimes it's a news story, other times it's a video.
I sometimes get inspired to write a movie review. Just

(01:18:03):
about everything I want to share that doesn't end up
in the podcast ends up in my blog. I also
post new editions of Murder Noir and Grin Reaper's Horrorrible
Humor there as I write them. I posted the blog
several times a week too, so there's always something to
come back for. Just click on blog at Weird Darkness
dot com. A friend of mine and his wife bought

(01:18:40):
a house in the south side of town about a
decade ago and invited my wife and I to the
housewarming party. My wife and I showed up and brought
an ice cream cake and a stack of new dishes
for their housewarming gift because during the move many of
the dishes got broken. When we arrived, the dishes and

(01:19:00):
the cake on the kitchen counter, and the four of
us went into the living room to watch a movie.
The movie was a post apocalyptic story and was really bleak,
and about ten minutes in we heard a crash come
from the kitchen. We all jumped then ran into the
kitchen and looked in, but we didn't turn on the
lights only used. The lights spilling into the kitchen from

(01:19:22):
the outside of the living room, and we could see
the cake and the dishes sitting still on the table
and concluded the noise had come from outside. We then
returned to the living room and continued to watch the movie.
Twenty minutes later, we heard an even louder crash that
definitely came from the kitchen. We all ran into the

(01:19:44):
kitchen and turned on the lights. The plates were still
on the table, unbroken and in pristine condition. However, smeared
into the icing of the cake were the words I
am in Hell. My wife and I made an excuse
and split. During the two weeks that followed that night,

(01:20:06):
my friends heard constant crashing noises, and cold spots were
randomly appearing throughout the house. My friend managed to sell
the house pretty quickly after that. Five years later, he
did a search online regarding the house and found that
it was owned in the nineteen fifties by a vicious

(01:20:27):
gangster known to the outside world as the City of
the Dead. Dargovs is a truly remarkable and mysterious place
we know very little about. Located outside the village of Dargovs,
in North Oshia, Russia. This remote place is shrouded in

(01:20:48):
myths and legends. Locals tell that no one has ever
come back alive from the City of the Dead, and
this is one of the reasons why people avoid this
spooky place. However, we shouldn't forget that it also takes
hours to reach the City of the Dead and the
road is dangerous. To get here, one must go through

(01:21:10):
narrow roads and several hills. The City of the Dead
is located in the middle of a mountain valley which
stretches over seventeen kilometers. The first mention of the City
of the Dead dates back to the beginning of the
fourteenth century. The city itself is an ancient cemetery where
tombs and crypts are placed on hills or mountain sides

(01:21:32):
closely together. The white crypts vary in size and shape.
It is estimated this architectural style dates back to two
thousand years ago. Some of the crypts have ridged curved
roofs going inward in steps, with a pointed peak at
the top. The smaller crypts have flat sides on the

(01:21:53):
front and back, yet on the sides they curve inwards,
and the smallest of the crypts have no roofs at all.
There are ninety nine different tombs and crypts. At the
back of the complex. There is also a watchtower, but
the top of it has been destroyed. Why the Alanian Necropolis,
as this place is called, was built here is unknown.

(01:22:17):
Local legends and myths tell stories about plagues that wiped
out entire families. According to one legend, a plague swept
through Ossetia in the eighteenth century, wiping out ninety percent
of the surrounding population. To cope with the disease, people
had to construct quarantine houses to isolate themselves from the village,

(01:22:39):
patiently awaiting their death. When they died, their corpses were
left to rut inside these huts. Our historical knowledge about
the City of the Dead is limited, which is the
reason why we cannot fully comprehend some of the unusual
discoveries archaeologists are found here. For example, scientists have discovered

(01:23:00):
that several of the bodies inside the crypts are buried
in ancient wooden boats. The puzzling question is why the
use of boats in a place where there are no rivers.
One possible explanation is that the boats have symbolic meaning
they could serve as transportation for departed souls. Perhaps our

(01:23:20):
ancestors thought that the departed soul had to cross a
river in order to get to heaven, and hence the boat.
The concept of the souls is very old. Ancient belief
about the soul can be found among many cultures worldwide,
and people living in Ossetia most likely believed in some
sort of afterlife. Another curious archaeological discovery revealed that there

(01:23:44):
was a well in front of every crypt. It is
said that once the Ossetians buried their dead, they would
drop a coin in the well. If it happened to
hit a stone at the bottom, it was taken to
mean that the soul had reached Heaven. Were often buried
with belongings, which shows people believed in the existence of

(01:24:05):
an afterlife. I'm a bit distressed by something that's going
on in my life right now. Over the past few months,
I kept seeing this woman like a face in the crowd.
I would see her in the street, just sort of
hanging around in the background. I have no idea how

(01:24:28):
long it's been going on, as I'm sure I only
started to notice this recently. I never saw her close
up She's always just at a distance, and always just
a fleeting glimpse, like out of the corner of my eye.
The funny thing is that she makes me feel well terrified.

(01:24:50):
I have no idea why she terrifies me, but she
casts something of a sinister figure, clothed in a dark
shawl and dark clothes. At first, first I thought I
was simply imagining this, But now I am scared witless
and I don't know what to do about it. Last night,
as I was walking home from the pub a bit mery,

(01:25:13):
I saw her walking just ahead of me. It froze
me in my tracks, and I felt that same sense
of foreboding. I noticed that no matter how fast or
slow I walked, she seemed to stay the same distance
ahead of me. What happened next, though, really disturbed me.

(01:25:35):
As I reached the door of my home, still feeling
strangely afraid, I looked up the street and there she was.
Slowly she turned her head and I saw her for
the first time. She had no face, nothing. I couldn't
sleep last night. I was afraid she would show up

(01:25:57):
at my doorstep, or even worse, in my house. Who
and what is this faceless woman? Imagine waking up in
the middle of the night, you can hear footsteps downstairs,
You venture down the stairs and find yourself face to

(01:26:18):
face with a ghost. That's exactly what happened to one man.
As reported in the British press, a baffled father claims
his home is being haunted by the ghost of a
previous tenant after catching a picture of the old lady
trying to open the kitchen door. Luke Jackson is currently

(01:26:38):
staying at his brother Tom's house in Sheffield, South Yorkshire,
and got up for a cigarette in the early hours
of November thirteenth when he could not sleep. The thirty
six year old claims he could hear footsteps downstairs and
turned on the light of his phone's camera to see
what happened, but the self employed landscaper was left stunned

(01:27:00):
after taking a picture and discovering the ghostly figure of
an old woman wearing a purple cardigan stood at the
bottom of the stairs. After ruling out any other possible explanations,
mister Jackson is convinced the woman he photographed is the
ghost of the house's former tenant, who died ten months previously.

(01:27:23):
The father of three has been staying with his brother
and his girlfriend, Alice Thomas for the past few months,
and claims this is the first time he's noticed ghostly
goings on. He said, if I'm being honest, this thing
has completely stumped me. I just don't know what it is,
and the only explanation is that it's a ghost. It's

(01:27:45):
almost like photographing the log desk monster in its entirety.
It's the photo of a ghost that you never expect
to have. He sometimes have bits of the thing, arms
and legs, but never a whole photo of the entire thing.
This photo is almost too perfect. After catching a glimpse
of some of the documentation of the previous occupant, he

(01:28:07):
is convinced the ghost is the old woman's spirit haunting
the stairs. Mister Jackson said, we've talked about this woman before.
She had mobility problems, apparently problems with going downstairs. Alice
said to me that since she's had the property, she's
heard banging and footsteps. The banging especially was coming from

(01:28:29):
the stairs. The photo appears to show an old woman
clad in a black dress and a purple cardigan leaning
across in an apparent attempt to open the door. Mister
Jackson said it must have been around two thirty am.
I was just sat up planning a landscaping job through
in my head. I just started hearing footsteps and it

(01:28:51):
was like there was something there. I was just like,
that's definitely footsteps, and I used my phone as a
flashlight by taking a photo. That's when I counted it.
When I looked back at the shot, that figure had
just appeared. This completely baffled me. Mister Jackson added that
it was fortunate he took the shot because he claims

(01:29:14):
he took the clearest picture of a ghost he has
ever seen. He said, there's a lot of ghost videos
where it's blatantly a moth flying in front of the
camera or some kind of reflection, but this was different.
You can see the photo by clicking the link to
the original story in the show notes. According to his

(01:29:40):
story in the Birmingham Mail, Manchester based paranormal investigators Dale
Makin and Justin Cowell of the TV series Paranormal Truth
are set to venture into the forest of Cannick Chase
with a WISA board in an effort to contact the
enigmatic Black Eyed Kid there. Cannick Chase is a place
many have described as tranquil or beautiful, a part of

(01:30:03):
England where few would ever dream of finding anything out
of the ordinary. It is a place of dog walkers, fishing,
and natural life. It also seems to be a place
of unnatural death. There been several terrifying accounts of black
eyed children in the area, and these accounts seemed to
becoming more frequent. The mother and daughter were walking through

(01:30:28):
Birch's Valley when they heard the screams of a young child.
By all accounts, they couldn't tell if it was a
boy or a girl, but the child seemed to be
in distress and sounded extremely close to them. The two
of them turned and ran towards the source of the screen.
They couldn't find the child anywhere, and stopped to catch

(01:30:49):
their breath. The mother turned around and saw a girl
standing behind her. The girl was no more than nine
or ten years old and had her hands over her eyes.
The mother asked her how she was. It seemed natural
that she had been the one who'd been screaming. The
girl dropped her hands slowly and placed them by her side.

(01:31:12):
The mother watched in horror as the girl opened her eyes,
and she saw that they were completely black, no iris,
no white, just completely black. The mother jumped back and
grabbed her daughter. The girl disappeared in a second, but
the mother said that she was chased by strange feelings

(01:31:35):
all day. An earlier account from Cannic Chase came from
a married couple who were walking their dog. As they
walked through Danse Woodland, they could hear the sounds of giggling.
A child, by all accounts, no taller than three feet
in height, appeared out of nowhere. The couple stood watching

(01:31:56):
her and eventually noticed that the girl had completely black eyes.
Her head was tilted to one side, as though she
had been hung. The couple watched as the girls stared
at them for a few minutes before running away into
a dense area of the forest. The interesting thing about
the Canic Chase sightings is that many of the accounts

(01:32:19):
happen during the day. For those who dare to walk
through the forests and overgrowth of the chase, make sure
you don't travel alone. Back when I was in college,

(01:32:41):
I was living in a pretty rough part of town
in a very old and run down first floor apartment.
Nothing out of the ordinary happened there for several months
until one night, when I was lying on my bed
watching TV. Suddenly I heard three pounding knocks on the
wall behind my bed. I ignored it. It happened again

(01:33:05):
and again, and I kept hearing these knocks on the wall.
It was just heavy pounding, like someone was hitting the
wall with both of their fists. At first, I thought
it had to be some drunk outside hitting the wall.
I went over to the window to see if I
could see anyone. Nobody was there. The knocking stopped, so

(01:33:26):
I went back to bed and tried to settle down
in front of the TV. A few minutes later, it
started again, only this time the knocking was on the
opposite wall. This freaked me out. It eventually stopped after
about half an hour. A few weeks later, this happened
again while a friend was visiting. Teasingly, he said it

(01:33:49):
was a ghost. I didn't think too much of it
at the time, but looking back, what else could it
have been. This knocking would happen off and on. Months
would go by without any knocking, and then it would
start up again. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

(01:34:10):
Eventually I moved and haven't experienced anything since. Sometimes I
think about going back and talking to the current resident
to find out if he or she has experienced anything.

(01:34:30):
I work in an office building in Los Angeles. Over
the last couple of years, a lot of strange things
have happened in that office that neither of us my
work colleagues, can easily explain. The first strange thing happened
one morning when my workmate and I were turning our
computers on. She was in the lunch room and I

(01:34:51):
was in the central office when I heard her say,
be right there. She came to the office and said
that she clearly heard me calling her name, which I no,
I didn't do, but we shook it off. However, this
started happening on a daily basis. Sometimes it was me
who heard someone calling my name. It was very strange.

(01:35:14):
Then the tapping started. Both my work colleague and myself
kept feeling someone tapping us on the shoulder as we worked.
Sometimes the taps would last for a few seconds, sometimes
it would be a gentle touch. The phantom name calling
and tapping stopped for a long time, But something else happened.

(01:35:36):
In the morning. When we arrived at the office, we
would find every single one of the windows open. Then,
of course, there were the calls. The phone would ring
in our office and when it was picked up, there
would be nobody on the other end of the line.
This would happen at least once a week. These days

(01:35:56):
were dealing with strange banging noises, chairs being dragged around,
computers turning off and on. But we've never seen anything.
It's kind of freaky, but we're getting used to it.
I just wonder who or what it is. When Weird

(01:36:19):
Darkness returns, I'll have an original fictional horror story from
a Weirdo family member called Amba up next. Sometimes you

(01:36:40):
feel a bit nutty, especially if you're a Weirdo. If
that feeling transfers to your taste buds as well, I've
got some great news for you. We'd dark roast Nutty
Mummy coffee wrap your taste buds around this medium dark
roast blend with shrouds of almond, honey and chocolate. Each
bag of Nutty Mummy is exclusive to Weird Darkness and
is roasted to order, then bandaged, I mean bagged specifically

(01:37:02):
for you to ensure a maximum freshness for you, you're a mummy,
and anyone else to share it with. Intomb your old
coffee and bring your taste buds back from the dead
with Weird Dark Rose to Nutty Mummy at Weird Darkness
dot com slash coffee. That's Weird Darkness dot com slash coffee.

(01:37:35):
People keep on asking me what it is with me
and water. I drink it, sure, obviously I have to
in order to stay alive. But when I grab my bottle,
it's when I'm severely, absolutely dehydrated, and not until I
reach my threshold of thirst. I know this takes a
toll on my body over time, but a part of

(01:37:56):
me cannot yet overcome the sheer horror I faced a
few months back from the apparently harmless water. I am
still recovering from the shock of it all, and my
shrink has taken it on the top of her priority
list to help me overcome my fear. The very water
that sustains life has taken the very essence of it

(01:38:18):
out of me. You see, it's not the water itself
that I'm terrified of, it's what is inside of it.
I was a university researcher a few months back, specializing
in microbiology, and currently on an indefinite leave from the
university and my department. I doubt if I ever will

(01:38:41):
be able to go back to that lab. The university
took great efforts to prevent the spread of the news
of the incident, and it looks like they did a
good job. I think people should know for their own
safety about that devilish lake, that abominable water body that
cursed me for the rest of my miserable existence. While

(01:39:01):
working at the university, some colleagues of mine and I
came to know of this local lake, which allegedly had
suddenly the clearest of all waters all of a sudden overnight.
It didn't sound much at the beginning, but rubers and
word of mouth started spreading quickly in the area, with
some incredible claims, like one that said you could see

(01:39:24):
the bottom of the lake through the water, as if
looking through clear glass. This particular lake had been in
the area all along, and there was nothing special about it.
Locals often went fishing to this place, and teenagers used
to hang around the lake perimeters having a good time
with their lovers and friends. On one fateful morning, Pete

(01:39:45):
and I decided to check it out ourselves, hoping that
we would find something, and mostly because of our peaked
interest in the lake. After hearing about it almost every
day for about a week now. Who took our car
and drove for a couple of month miles before we
reached the narrow, worn down pathway that leads to the lake.

(01:40:06):
It was an early morning, with the weather being crisp
and the sunshine welcoming, and lake or no lake, we
were quite enjoying ourselves. We parked the car off the
road and started to make our way through the narrow pathway.
It was about a ten minute or so hike till
the periphery where the ground starts to slope and the

(01:40:26):
waters begin. Being early morning, there were no other people
or cars to be seen, and it was peaceful and
quiet all around. While walking across the pathway, the evidence
of recent human visitations were quite clear, with crushed coke cans,
empty bags of chips and the like. A number of

(01:40:47):
people have been here in the past few days to
witness the clear water's first hand and contributed to the
folklore that was building up in the community regarding this place.
We reached it and we saw really surprised us. The
rumors were not entirely inaccurate. After all, the water was
clear like crystal clear, and with the sun shining down

(01:41:12):
on the lake. We could see to the bottom of it,
right to the numerous pebbles and swirls of mud and
silt on the lake bed. This was incredible. We were
thinking as to what might have happened that suddenly made
the water so clear and almost transparent, as if it's
just not there. Did the authorities clean it up or something.

(01:41:34):
I've never seen such a cleanup job ever before, said Pete.
Had it not been for the breeze which made the
little waves on the surface, it was difficult to spot
where the water began. The thought came to my mind.
I told Pete about it, and he agreed. It turns
out I had some collection jars in my car, which

(01:41:55):
if I go back and fetch, we could take some
samples of the lake water with us test it in
our lab, basically just to see if we could find
out what made it so clean, so clear, the harmless
activity after all, since it's just plain old water. I
noticed something quite odd in the lake though, as we
could see all the way to the lakebed, it was

(01:42:17):
very stark to see that there were no fish in
the water, absolutely not a single one, nor was there
any plant life either. No algae, moss, or any of
those long grass like plants that grow underwater. It was
as if someone had drained out the entire lake of
all forms of life that it used to host. I

(01:42:39):
told Pete about this, and he remarked this was very
unusual and that he noticed it as well. We knew
that at the very least there had to be fish,
as this lake was frequented by the local anglers. This
odd observation made us even more determined to test the
lake water, and thus I handed over an empty sterile

(01:42:59):
jar to Pete and he crouched down and filled it up.
Make sure you don't touch the water, I cautioned him.
We hung around for another hour before heading back to
the lab, and also took some photographs of the lake
and yes, selfie's too. Upon our return to the lab,
Pete and I transferred the sample to a number of

(01:43:19):
small beakers and kept them on a separate tray. The
intriguing question at that point was why there was no
life form to be seen. Was it because of any
chemical spill? In that case, where were the carcasses of
the fish and what happened to the plants. I discussed
this with Pete over lunch, and we decided to carry

(01:43:41):
out a few basic tests. We did not have any
fish specimen handy at that time, but we had tadpoles
which would do just as well, So all being said,
we started our little test. We took one of the
beakers and set it up in a contained area, brought
in one of the tadpoles, and slowly dropped it into
the beaker. The tadpole started moving about and thrashed its tail.

(01:44:05):
Around a minute passed and nothing changed. Pete and I
exchanged glances. Then we noticed it. The tadpole was changing color.
The dark brown hue of its skin was changing to
a lighter shade, and it started thrashing its tail furiously,
as if struggling against some unseen force. Its skin color

(01:44:28):
was now rapidly transforming to a clearer form, almost translucent,
and we could see its tiny bones and organs inside.
We were stupefied at this and had no explanation of
what we were witnessing right in front of our eyes.
The horror show had not yet ended, though. In a
few minutes, the whole body of the tadpole became transparent

(01:44:50):
and turned into a jelly like consistency. The organs, bones, skin, eyes.
Everything had now turned transparent and the creature stopped moving.
Shortly before that, it was now still at the bottom
of the beaker, and we could just faintly make out
its outline in the now still water. Pete said, it

(01:45:12):
sure looks dead. Just the outline remains. Hand me the stirrer.
I handed Pete the stirrer. He dipped the glass stirr
slowly in the water, and the end lightly touched the
outlined shape of the dead tadpole. Doesn't feel solid, he said.
Play some more pressure, I said. Upon applying the slight

(01:45:34):
extra pressure, the stirr passed right through it and touched
the beaker's bottom. The shape dissolved. The almost transparent, silhouette
like shape of the tadpole simply dissolved in the water,
right before our eyes. We couldn't believe what just happened,
and simply had no explanation. We collectively let out a

(01:45:55):
worried sigh and kept staring at the beaker. So visible
changes in the water at all. The way it looked
before we dropped the tadpole, and the way it looks
now was exactly the same. It's as if nothing was
ever done. To the water crystal clear with nothing in it,
or so we thought. The procedure was repeated with another

(01:46:19):
tadpole and a fresh beaker, resulting in the same outcome.
We videotaped the process and planned on disclosing the find
to our superiors. It made sense now as to why
the lake water was so clear. There is definitely something
in it that is responsible for these effects on living matter,
something that dissolved the fish, something that obliterated the tadpoles,

(01:46:43):
something ungodly. With this in mind, out came the microscope.
He prepared two glass slides, each with a drop of
the cursed water, and set them up under the microscope.
A closer inspection with enhanced resolution, we saw a shitload
of unicellular microbial organisms moving about in the slide sample.

(01:47:07):
That single drop was teeming with creatures. It reminded us
of the amieba, the type of single celled organism commonly
found in water bodies. Maybe it was a much more
aggressive subspecies of the same thing. The amieba were moving
in rapid, jerky movements using their flagellum and a whiplike motion.

(01:47:28):
What was very unusual was that, apart from the cell nucleus.
There were no other cell organelles present, at least not
with the current resolution of our microscope. We recorded all
of these findings and compiled them to be presented to
the other professors for their take on the matter. The
species needed to be identified and fast. I proceeded to

(01:47:50):
transfer the beaker tray to a secure and dedicated biohazard
area in the lab. I would never forget that fateful moment.
Tray was in my hands and I was treading down
the hallway with haste. I should have noticed the bunch
of equipment cables sneaking across the floor, but I didn't,
and inevitably I tripped on it. The beaker closest to

(01:48:12):
my left hand spilled some of the water on the
tray and some on my clenched fist. I became terrified
as the burning sensation started to gain hold, becoming intense
with each second. I called out to Pete, almost screaming,
even in that moment a panic. I had to set
the tray with the rest of the beakers safely on
the floor and slid it under a table nearby, struggling

(01:48:35):
not to lose my grip. Pete came running and didn't
need to be told what had happened. He immediately grabbed
a roll of tissues and approached me to wipe the
stain gloves. Pete, use your damn gloves, I screamed in panic,
knowing what it would mean if the water came into
contact with his skin. Peter realized it too, and was
fumbling to put them on, and he threw the roll

(01:48:55):
of tissues at me. My hand started to burn more intensely.
I no amount of wiping helped. I was losing feeling
in the hand. The spot where the water made contact
was now swelling and became deathly pale and blistered. It
hurt like hell. I clutched my left arm with my
right and held it. My left arm registered no sense

(01:49:17):
of touch. I was able to move my fingers around
till then, but now they were feeling stiff and immobile,
almost paralyzed, panicking, sweating, heart rate climbing. I was still
trying to keep Pete informed about what the feeling was like.
Then my hand started to dissolve, like those tadpoles and
those fish. I was unable to move my fingers anymore,

(01:49:39):
and I lost all sense of my left forearm. I
touched a finger with my right hand, and it was
squishy and spongy. I couldn't feel the bone at all.
The insides of all my fingers were being turned into liquid,
and as my skin lost its natural color and turning
more and more transparent, I saw the insides of my

(01:49:59):
fingers no bones, no blood or blood vessels, no tissue,
no nothing. Everything had turned into a clear liquid with
seemingly nothing inside. This hideous transformation of turning my hand
to jelly now started creeping up from the fingers upwards.
I vigorously shook my hand, hoping to stop the ascent,

(01:50:21):
and my fingers simply slept off from what remained of
my palm. The pain was mind numbing, and maybe it
was enough to make one lose consciousness, but with so
much adrenaline rushing through me, I felt every bit of
the pain right to the bone. My sleffed off fingers
and half of my palm lay on the floor, looking
nothing like what they originally had been. Looked like a

(01:50:43):
small puddle of water someone dropped from a cup while
passing so innocuous. The freaking amiba were eating through to
my wrist now and I felt the sting and the
pain with even greater ferocity. No amount of screaming helped.
My throat started to hurt. Fellow research heard my screams
and Pete's frantic cries for help and oh my god,

(01:51:04):
and rushed to our aid. Pete screamed at them to
keep distance lest someone accidentally step on a puddle and
end up just like me. Half of my forearm was
now gone, and the swelling mass of liquid just shut
itself off and fell to the floor, creating another puddle.
I threw a bunch of tissues over it to keep
it contained. I then realized if I was unable to

(01:51:26):
stop the amiba from climbing up my arm, it would
turn my entire body to jelly, and I'd end up
dead being a puddle on the floor. And that too
very soon, Pete the acid. Give me the acid, I
yelled as loud as I could. Pete had his gloves
on by then and quickly brought an unopened jar of
concentrated sulfuric acid, prying it open on the way to me.

(01:51:50):
Pete tore off a piece of the tarp covering equipment
nearby and lay it down hastily. I lay down on
the floor with my left arm stretched out and held
with my right. In just a few moments, my elbow
would start to dissolve. The thick, viscous acid emitted a
vapor as the seal was broken, and Pete eagerly looked
into my eyes for approval. I nodded, sorry man, he

(01:52:13):
muttered and started pouring the acid on the stump of
my left arm. I saw my arm smoking, the skin
turning black instantly. As soon as the acid made contact.
It was working. I was continuously screaming in sheer pain
while Pete continued to pour the acid in order to
kill the single celled bastards. After he was done, the arm,

(01:52:35):
or what remained of it, looked still and dead. There
was no jelly transformation taking place any more. The university
authorities had been alerted by then, and some one called
nine one one. I wonder what the guide described to
the operator. I could not take it any more, and
with the pain now greatly subsided, I passed out unconscious

(01:52:59):
on the floor. When I woke up, I found myself
at the hospital with a huge bandage securing my once
left hand. I felt dizzy and a throbbing sensation near
my left shoulder. The doctor came in and informed me
that they had to perform amputation from a little higher
from the elbow, and that there was no other option.

(01:53:21):
The CDC had been alerted of the amiba from the lake,
and I later learned they had cordoned off and sealed
all paths leading up to the lake and armed guards
were being placed to deter the curious public from the find.
There was not much media coverage of the incident, and
the only news report I saw just mentioned of an
accident at the university, no details, no mention of the amiba.

(01:53:47):
My life has changed drastically since the incident. I have
no more left hand and I have a new found
fear and disgust of water. CDC is working closely with
the university to identify the possible source of the organism.
Was it some naturally occurring, previously thought extinct species that

(01:54:08):
somehow resurfaced, or was it bioengineered Anyhow, That's all I
have to say. Please shut the door on your way out,
Thanks for listening. All stories in Weird Darkness aren't purported

(01:54:31):
to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find
source links or links to the authors in the show notes.
The Drury Lane Theater is from the book one hundred
True Ghost Stories Terrifying Hauntings from the UK and around
the World by Allan Toner. The Real Boogeyman is from
the book Could It Be True? Volume one, Urban Legends
by Cindy Parmiter. The horror at Pemberton Mill is from

(01:54:54):
the book A Pale Horse Was Death by Troy Taylor
and Renee Cruz. Haunt of My Grandmother's Cottage. My Doppelganger shaken,
not scared, Roger Moore's experience with the paranormal, The red
eyed being that held me down, tormented by a spirit
in hell, the faceless specter that follows me, black eyed

(01:55:15):
child of Canic Chase, the pounding walls of an apartment building,
the playful office poltergeist, and father claims his families being
haunted by the ghost of an old lady. All came
from the website My Haunted Life Too dot com. The
Baldwinsville homicide was written by Robert Wilhelm for a Murdered
by gaslight. City of the Dead is by Ellen Lloyd

(01:55:36):
for Ancient Pages, and the fictional story Amiba was submitted
by Sabby Ray directly to Weird Darkness. Weird Darkness is
a production and trademark of Marler House Productions. And now
that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you
with a little light. Proverbs nineteen, verse three. People ruin

(01:55:57):
their lives by their own foolishness, and then they are
angry at God. And a final thought, do something today
that your future self will thank you for. Your actions
and decisions today will shape the way you will be
living in the future. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining

(01:56:17):
me in the weird Darkness.

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